Yesterday, the YouTube App on my Roku stopped having a “recommended” block. That was where I’d pick up most of the “stuff” I’d watch in the bedroom while doing other stuff, like making the bed (sort of happening now ;-), or sorting books on the shelves, or working on the tablet, or… It tended to have a pretty good set of Real News sites with a modest centrist / right leaning. Folks like Tim Pool, Dr. Turley, Bongino, and more.
Now I could still scroll down through several pages to the “stuff you watched before” lists and try to dig them out… Instead, I decided to just add them to the bookmarks on my browser… I also decided to add some music videos (thus my musical posting…). So last night for about 6 hours, I just looked at lists of shows on the Roku YouTube channel and found / bookmarked those makers on the browser.
In the bedroom, the Odroid N2 (running plain Armbian) is also connected to the TV. I’m typing this using it. When, for some reason, I want a computer “pronto” without going to another room, or when the Tablet is too small and slow, or if the Office Computers are tied up doing something (like that 24 hour Gentoo build…), I’ll use this one. It can run video full speed to a full screen (or at least the 720p of the TV nominally and usually the 1080p that it seems to do when asked – but hard to tell due to screen size and distance). So why use the Roku?…
What I decided was that since the Roku does NOT let me set bookmarks on the Roku, and YouTube likes to play with the algorithm to prevent me from watching wat I want, I’d just use the browser on the N2 and gain more complete control. It’s all of one remote click away…
Oddly, the Roku in the living room, where very few political channels are watched and where the spouse watches things like Disney and Latin Mass… it still does have a “recommended” line showing in the YouTube. Go figure… (I’ll wait ;-)
Now, just to see if things had reverted, I launched the Roku YouTube again. Nope, no “recommended”. I ran down to the “new uploads” line and there was a “Salty Cracker” Video. Oh Yeah, I forgot to add “Salty Cracker”! So off to add him to my browser bookmarks. His video, however, said he is taking a week off from YouTube. Why? Yet Another Bogus Ban.
He was my source for the fact that Kyle’s lawyer was suing Biden. THAT video got a “strike” for “advocating violence” when it did not. He has a “story of woe” wherein his 2nd appeal got the video restored, but was pissed. So he’s “self banning” and only putting this week’s stuff up on an alternative platform.
Sidebar On F-Bombs:
The reason I’ve not mentioned Salty before, or included his video in a posting is simply because he liberally “salts” his videos with lots of F-Bombs and suggestions as to what might need sucking, biting, or eating… So BE ADVISED SALTY IS VERY ADULT CONTENT AND NSFW!
OK, back at videos…
He mentioned some video site he was going to. It took me a while to find it, as it is not spelled as it sounds.
https://odysee.com/@SaltyCracker:a
So I’ve gone there, book marked it, and watched the latest (non-YouTube) video. I’ll now be watching my Salty videos there instead of on the Roku:YouTube or even the Browser:Youtube.
Similarly, Crowder has a “piss on YouTube” closer to his Morning Mug Club videos where only party of the show goes on YouTube and the rest is on another alternative platform. Bitchute I think. I’ll need to pay attention next time and add that link to my bookmarks. I did find something on D.Tube that looks like it, but may need some kind of login:
https://d.tube/#!/v/u.bendover69/ynqo5fvj6l1
Slowly I’m building up a set of bookmarks for non-YouTube video services. As of now, whenever I’m looking for one of my “usual shows”, it will start with the browser and bookmarks. As others show up on the Roku, I’ll add them to the bookmarks and that traffic, too, will exit Roku / YouTube. Some, like StarTrek Continues may only be on YouTube, but that’s OK.
In short, my bedroom TV is now only partly going to run the Roku. Most of it will come via alternative sites and the computer. I’m also going to be testing my other boards to find out which one is best for the living room TV. May as well get them both done. I have the hardware and software, just “some assembly required” ;-)
What happens when / IF the Roku:YouTube “recommended” line returns? Probably not much. I’ve moved. This is more selective and more under my control. I see no reason to ever move back. I’ll still use the Roku:YouTube but only at the bare minimum edge when I’m too lazy to boot up the computer or want to check on any preferred programs I’ve missed in the move.
FWIW, here’s a few “alternative video” sources I’ve added to my video bookmarks this morning:
https://dlive.tv/TheSaltyCracker where he does his live feeds. I need to explore what other folks have live feeds there. Crowder maybe?
https://www.bitchute.com/channel/s7sIruG9mgWl/ I’m pretty sure Sargon of Akkad and some others have BitChute channels too. Again, a bit of judicious searching needed.
https://d.tube/ Small at the moment, but that makes it easier to find the YouTube Refugees you are looking for ;-)
More academic / educational oriented.
https://www.dailymotion.com/us Looks kind of Newsy / Magazine oriented, but really, I’ve not gone down the rabbit hole there yet…
I know there are others. As I think of them I’ll add links here. For now, it’s just what I ran into this morning.
In Conclusion
So I’ve reached my own “Piss On YouTube” moment. I was comfortable with their mild abuse of the Roku App as my “recommended” line continued to give me a reasonable selection of things I’d liked and watched. Everyday Astronaut for SpaceX launches / explosions. Scott Manley for rocket details and history. Several Fan Movie Trek series. Lots of Center / Right clean news sources (Tim Pool and others) and the odd morning Mug Club with my coffee (and a whole lot more… dozens… it will take me a while to get them all remembered and bookmarked)
But one by one some channels were deleted and others were de-ranked, so I’d have to search for them to get them. Akkad. Infowars (that I’d taken to checking on at their web site with my tablet). Lately Bongino is rarely in the recommended. Also ALL the folks live streaming the Riots in Portland, D.C., Seattle, etc. have gone POOF! from recommendations (though I could get them via a search). And now the whole recommended line is gone.
So “Why Bother?”.
As of now, my last 2 days YouTube use has dropped about 75% and what was done was largely just “find and move to bookmark.” The next few days will be more “Identifying alternative sources, finding favorites, and adding bookmarks”
I’ll be sitting with my Tech Notepad (where I record system builds and such for creating scripts and postings) when I do watch TV and noting any “Oh Yeah! That program!” that I need to move over to alternatives.
Basically, it’s time to “Piss on YouTube”. So I am.
Musings from the Chiefio 
Hey, Timcast is on Odysee too!
https://odysee.com/@timcast:c9/blm-leftists-attack-trump-supporters-as:4
As is NTD, a news channel with interesting coverage of China…
I think I’m liking this Odysee… It offers up interesting channels. Here’s a collection of Antifa / BLM rioters / thugs attacking police, and getting a pretty hard Take Down as Cops know what the heck they are doing!
https://cdn.lbryplayer.xyz/api/v3/streams/free/Karma-for-Rioters-and-leftists/e9d23a0d90bf094916f40f9ee8d606e1010def3a/b937db
Golly, Alex Jones too:
https://odysee.com/@AlexJonesChannel:c/Twitter-Leftists-Celebrate-Ron-Paul-Stroke:6
And Styxhexenhammer too!:
https://odysee.com/@Styxhexenhammer666:2/ron-paul-suffers-a-tia-or-stroke-live-on:5
I’m going to need a good long dig at that site…
Ah, it looks like “Library” is not Library, but “LBRY”…
https://lbry.com/ free and open source for DIY (the Odysee site says powered by Lbry).
Their own intro video:
https://lbry.tv/@lbry:3f/meetlbrytv:c Oddly, has what looks like Russian Cyrillic videos tagged on the ‘related’ bar. Wonder if their developers are in Russia… (They have good programmers there.)
The video site directly: https://lbry.tv/
Timcast is there, as is The Quartering:
https://lbry.tv/@TheQuartering:1
https://lbry.tv/@timcast:c9
Ohhh! AND “Redacted Tonight”!
https://lbry.tv/@RedactedTonight:c/the-truth-behind-fbi-s-latest-russian:4 (Related to RT IIRC, but fun ;-)
Looks like another one worth a bit of digging…
I go to UTube links when sent by friends. but I do not go to UTube links to find real things. I am bookmarking this page to find real things.
Time to move away. The masters of the universe are only that because we allow them to be. Time to disallow them.
BTW. Thank you for educating me on DDG. I thought it was a Google Anonymizer. It is and much more. BIng may not be best, but better than google. And I refuse to use Google.
Tony Heller has been barred from YouTube for a week and has switched to NewTube for his videos.
It seems that YouTube doesn’t need customers, and when a company decides that, sell any shares/stocks/bonds and wait until the inevitable happens.
@Graeme No.3 – I know it seems impossible right now, but eventually YouTube will hit the limit of cute kitten and puppy videos, which is all that will remain of their content.
I’m not sure what Einstein’s thoughts would be regarding infinite kitten and puppy videos.
;o)
@Graeme #3 – thanks! I respect Tony. I have no respect for utube. Gathering links.
(shrug) If I had my way, Google would be entirely banned here: https://decloudus.com/
They hang by a thread due to Youtube users.
Someday, I will cut them off.
Why we need someone with the resources and library planning competence to build a supreme public video site on ZeroNet. Much too messy now, No indexing.
If that happens – you can forget about Youtube. Over time there will be enough seeders to insure that Zeronet will always outperform Youtube.
It’s hard for shit stirrers to give up the clearnet. But give it up they must. Contemplate the number of people who lost EVERYTHING this year thanks to the censorship demons. All that effort – for naught.
Shit stirrers, quit playing the chump.
@Taz – remember MySpace?
Google, Fakebook and Twitter do not.
Forget the past and repeat it.
Here’s Tony!
https://newtube.app/user/TonyHeller
@Taz:
Nice!
I run my own internal DNS server on a Raspberry Pi (with PiHole) Model 2. It just sits there “on” all the time. I also put a 32? GB flash stick in it that is NFS shared so any machine that needs to “toss something” over to some other machine has an easy place to put it. I pointed its DNS services to somewhere modestly safe (forget exactlfy where ATM, but not my Telco nor 8.8.8.8 4.4.4.4 etc. OpenDNS I think?
https://www.opendns.com/
I’d not mind having a more hard core privacy oriented “upstream” ;-)
@H.R.:
I’ve put a laundry list of Google prying, spying and advertizing names into my DNS and locked them to localhost. A lot of stuff now doesn’t make it. But I did notice in the music videos about one in 8 of the “inset adds” at the bottom of the video DID make it through. So time to get onto the PiHole and ground a few more IPs, I think. It’s only been a year or two, so maybe a little maintenance is OK ;-)
Oh, and one other benefit of moving to the browser from the Roku: The Rokus are on the house network. All my computers are behind my lab router with added protections and better control of where DNS is resolved. The Roku does not make DNS control as easy as I’d like…
Oh, and in addition to Puppies & Kittens, I noticed that about a week or two ago a BUNCH of “soothing music” channels started to show up in my “recommended” list. I don’t listen to Muzak on the Roku… I NEVER listen to “sounds of rain” or “sounds of soothing FOO” videos. Spouse doesn’t use this ROKU at all. So where were those coming from? Someone at Alphabet / Google / YouTube adjusting the algorithm to try to “sooth” ‘people like me’… It didn’t work and now an update cycle later, “recommended” is entirely gone… for my Roku…
It just smells like the oxymoronic “Social Engineering” in progress. All it has accomplished is to drive me away from their product and raise a minor rage…
FWIW, if you just go to newtube.app it tosses you into their recent and active list:
https://newtube.app/media/popular/1?media=all&category=overview&within=24hour
Some interesting stuff to dig through there, too! At least one prepper showed up ;-)
My Prediction:
As the Right Side of Center gets pruned from YouTube and goes to alternatives, the perceived center will move to “middle left”. Then the professional Triggered Trolls will only have modest left to rage over, and drive them away. Now “center” will be medium-far left. Repeat until only Raging Looney Left remains on YouTube. They either stop this just after the election, or they become a Trigger Land Mine Of Rage site.
Oh, and about a month or two ago a “news” block showed up several down the list on the Roku:YouTube. It always starts with Bloomberg and then has all the usual MSM/YSM sites. Nothing center or right.
Well, with the dropping of the “recommended” block, they also moved that to the Perpetual Top Line. Despite my NEVER clicking on anything in it. Clearly it isn’t reacting to my choices to give me more of what I click. Also, clearly, it is actively suppressing my preferred choices…
Bad YouTube! No clicks!!
Thank you for all the information here. Your dedication to informing us is much appreciated.
Hi E.M.S,
https://docs.pi-hole.net/guides/unbound/
Have your own recursive DNS in front of the Pi-hole on the same Raspberry pi. May need to update the Pi-hole, I think it needs version 4 or higher for the FTL part.
@Rienk:
Thanks for the doc. FWIW, I think I already have that set up… but you have reminded me that I need to check it ;-) The tale of sloth and woe:
A few years back, I bought some Pi M2 boards. At that time, I had 2 orginal Pi B+ boards (single v6 CPU, 700 MHz) one of which had died in a high static environment. The “survivor” was not very interesting compared to the M2 boards. So I turned it into a server. It is running Alpine Linux. A hardened and very small footprint linux.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpine_Linux
And for a couple of years I ran it as my combo Squid Proxy Server, DNS server, and misc small services appliance. It tended to “just run” so I tended to just ignore it.
I had a very large, manually created, list of IP Addresses that I black holed into oblivion. The problem, of course, was the need to update it from time to time.
Then, a couple of years later, I built a PiHole Server:
but instead of making it mobile, it is in the “dogbone” case stack with the B+. (Instead, I’ve stopped going to StarBucks due to their policies, escalating prices, and their insisting on ‘tagging’ my device to let it be approved to work in their stores… then Chinese Wuhan Covid hit and going out at all was less interesting).
I ran both in parallel for a good while. A year? During that time we had some power blinks / outages. Each power outage exceeding the UPS required a restart of the stack. Somewhere in there I refreshed the UPS equipment and strongly reduced the need to restart things. And somewhere in there the Pi B+ started to be a minor pain. It would not auto-reboot / restart on power up sometimes. So I mostly just got tired of needing to stick a monitor on it and figure out what was what. Ever more bits of kit got pointed at the PiHole for DNS, Squid proxy, etc.
The Pi B+ is, in theory, just fine. But frankly, I don’t know the status. When I do the “attach monitor, boot up, etc.” process, it’s fine… but “I moved on”. Last I looked, the little power light was not lit. I didn’t care much… Things are just fine using the PiHole / Squid proxy / DNS & etc server and I just pointed it to a different upstream than the B+. I also don’t have to deal with the manual list of IPs to “ground” and keeping it current. The PiHole looks to a maintained list “upstream”.
So on my perpetually too long ToDo list is to “refresh and evaluate” the Pi B+ and decide to either make it something else, or bring it up to date. Figure out why it became reluctant to just restart on it’s own (likely some question it is asking at boot, like an fsck that’s unhappy or something…) and put it back in regular use, or move it on to something else. But it just hasn’t been a priority.
The little Pi B+ was a surprisingly effective Squid Server. I’d expected it to bog down on web traffic, but it didn’t. I suppose that makes sense. Everything is limited by the ISP link to the internet and the little Pi B+ is way more than enough to handle that. I suppose I ought to consider just moving the PiHole service onto it (seeing as the Pi M2 is basically idle when running it…) but then I’d have to do work on 2 boards. And it all just works right now.
So Sloth has lead me to this point. I ought to do something… but I don’t have enough reason to NOT do something else in the queue. And boards are cheap. And I have too many to care about one sitting doing not much to nothing. More important has been trying to find a reliable Non-SystemD provider that runs across most of my boards. I think I’m there with Gentoo (still climbing over the Learning Curve Mountain…) but then I’d thought I was there with Devuan. Devuan seems to have too little interest in ARM SBCs and the XU4 in particular. Where I thought they would expand the list and support level over time, they seem stagnant to regressing on ARM board types.
So that’s my tale of woe and sloth. My “distcc” cluster not really working as the Pi M2 boards are now different release levels from the Pi M3 boards, and the XU4 is something else. Then one of the M2 boards is the PiHole server now. My Pi B+ on the disabled list, sort of. And me mostly playing with the XU4 and the Rock64 / RockPro64 boards… or Gentoo.
In my defense: I’d pretty much reached a stopping point on the temperature database and SQL analysis stuff. It needs a review to clean it up. (Rapid prototype finished, now is the step where you take lessons learned and go back and remake it the right way ;-) and Devuan stopped working on the XU4 (no bootable Devuan 2.0 or newer) where I preferred doing the work. The Python libraries on Slackware on the RockPro64 (IIRC) were not drawing graphs rights, and I was having more infrastructure issues (i.e. OS on ARM chips not having software I wanted for alternatives to Devuan). So I got shunted into this Search For The Holy Grail OS: A Linux without SystemD on most of my fast ARM boards AND with working SQL database and Python graphics library. It was harder than I expected…
So I let the little stuff slide a year or two…
During which time “staying alive” took front of queue with figuring out how to keep Chinese Wuhan Covid from killing “me and mine”. That just really completing about 2 months ago. (Vit-D, Zinc, Quinine / Quercetin, then if you get it: Ivermectin, etc.).
So now I’m buried in Gentoo. It looks like it meets all the Holy Grail criteria. But technically it is a challenge with the “Portage” system being a bit byzantine.
The result is I think I already have the PiHole configured as you describe, but frankly I’ve not revised it for 2 years as it “just works”… and I’m busy rewiring my brain with Gentoo commands ;-) But “bit rot” has hit the Dogbone Stack and it really want’s an update / do-over. Maybe next month ;-)
Gee….
Today, a few days after it disappeared, the “Recommended” block is back…
I wonder if it was massive complaints, a huge drop in clicks, or just a bug?
Whatever. I’ve started the move to browser / bookmarks, and this will now just let me be more complete about it.
It is a bit curious though.
I still see Heller on Youtube? I am signed in however.
https://www.youtube.com/c/TonyHeller/videos
I signed out an can still get to his channel.
The second part of Crowder’s show is on Blaze TV. A Mug Club subscription will get you Crowder and Blaze, and you can get a mug!
Thanks! Subscribed
@EM – deep sixing the Ad sites.
I am getting warnings from Fox News no less when I use Brave. As ad sites are like whack-a-mole, I am relying more and more on Brave. YMMV
@Phil:
Typing this in Brave on my tablet. I’ve been loving it for over a year? now…
Once I’ve stabilized my desktop Linux, I’m going to port it there, too. At present, I think you need to roll your own on ARM Linux. Android & PC Linux are just download the binaries (or that’s what I remember from a year+ ago…)